Where it all started

How the Dallas-area Sting team paved the way for the United States’ Women’s World Cup team

History beckons. The United States Women’s Soccer team on Sunday will attempt to win a record third World Cup title and its first since 1999.

A Fox TV audience of 8.4 million watched the Americans’ semifinal victory over No. 1 Germany. Sunday’s title game against Japan could rival the 1999 USA-China final (17.9 million) as the most-watched women’s soccer game ever.

Here in North Texas, a sisterhood of women in their 40s and 50s will watch with rapt, vested interest.

They were, are and always will be Sting Soccer Club. They are pioneers, world-renowned in the 1970s and ’80s, largely forgotten now. Before the U.S. national team was formed in 1985, Sting’s Under-19 team for a decade was America’s primary international women’s soccer representative.

The thing was, they were teenage girls playing and often beating women in their 20s. In October 1984, Sting represented America in the first FIFA-sanctioned world women’s tournament, in Xi’an, China, which many regard as a seminal event, leading to the first women’s World Cup in 1991.

Sting won the tournament, beating powerhouse Italy in the semifinal and Australia in the title game. It was the first time an American team, male or female, had won a major international tournament, but Sting players returned to their respective North Texas high schools to little fanfare.

“I don’t think we were cognizant, the extent of it,” 1984 Sting co-captain Michelle Conaway Kimzey says of the team’s trailblazing role. “At the time, we had a lot of pride being Sting. When we traveled, we became that team to beat.

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“I don’t know if we ever realized it would get to where it is today. The passion behind the game and the number of girls playing are incredible.”

Sting’s other 1984 captain was Carla Werden. Most American soccer fans know her by her married name, Carla Overbeck, central defender on the United States’ World Cup champions of 1991 and ’99. Overbeck’s tenure as U.S. captain (1993-2000) is tied for the longest with current captain Christie Rampone.

Another defender on the 18-player 1991 American World Cup team was Tracey Bates Leone, a standout on Sting’s 1985 U.S. Youth Soccer national championship team. Her sister Cathy played on Sting’s 1982 national championship team.

“Playing for Sting definitely was the perfect preparation,” recalls Leone, 48, who is in her sixth year as Northeastern University’s women’s soccer coach. Practices were always very, very physically demanding. We knew we would never run up against a team that was fitter than us.”

Sting’s head coach and taskmaster, Bill Kinder, is 76 now. When told that several of his players from the ’70s and ’80s describe rigorous, precisely structured practices that often began with a two-mile run, he chuckles as if to say, “Guilty as charged.”

“The level of fitness they achieved, that had never been done by females in history,” Kinder says.

Hyperbole? Perhaps. But there is no question the Sting helped pave the way for American women’s soccer, toward a day like Sunday, when a capacity crowd of 60,000 is expected in Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium and multitudes around the world will watch on TV.

In many respects, the birth and rise of the Sting dynasty exemplifies the narrative of women’s soccer in America.

There is little question that North Texas was the story’s epicenter in the ’70s and early ’80s and that revolutionary decisions were made here — starting with answering the question of whether females should even play soccer.

“At that time, girls sports really in a way were verboten,” Kinder says. “For the most part, people just didn’t think girls should be doing athletics at all.”

Bill Kinder, who coached the Sting in the ’70s and ’80s, has several pieces of memorabilia from his coaching days at his Richardson home. (Tom Fox/Staff Photographer)

The Sting origins

Soccer entered North Texas’ sports consciousness in 1967, when Lamar Hunt and Bill McNutt founded a franchise, the Dallas Tornado, in the new North American Soccer League.

Kinder, a Comanche, Okla. native and Sooners baseball player, took a job in the Dallas area after his 1962 graduation, settling his family in the Richardson School District.

In 1968, Kinder helped found the Spring Valley Athletic Association, which served Richardson and North Dallas. Kinder served as the recreation-level association’s volunteer president while coaching his two sons and daughter in various sports.

Bill Kinder helped found the Spring Valley Athletic Association in 1968, then went on to coach the Sting teams that paved the way for American women’s soccer. (Tom Fox/Staff Photographer)

Initially, the only sports offered to girls were volleyball, softball and basketball. Spring Valley was progressive in that its girls basketball teams played full-court. At the UIL high school level, Texas girls until 1978 played a six-on-six half-court format in which only forwards were allowed to shoot.

“People didn’t think women could do contact sports because they thought it would hurt our reproductive system,” recalls Darla McMinn Agnew, who played on the Richardson High basketball team as well as the Sting 1980 and ’82 national title teams. “Kinder had to get doctors notes stating it wouldn’t hurt the women or the babies.”

Texans were hardly alone in believing contact and endurance sports were unhealthy for girls and women. Between 1928 and 1960, women Olympians competed in no race longer than 200 meters. The 800 was added in ’60; the 1,500 in ’72 — which also was the year the Boston Marathon finally allowed women competitors.

“We found that the girls absolutely loved playing soccer,” Kinder says. “It was the first time they could do an outdoor sport that had some contact, running, hustling, sliding, sometimes falling. And the team concept had great appeal.”

In middle-class Richardson and North Dallas, soccer quickly became a sport of choice for boys, girls and parents. But when those kids grew out of youth sports and reached high school age, there were few avenues in which to continue soccer. The UIL didn’t sanction boys and girls soccer until 1982.

So in 1973, Kinder collaborated with other area youth sports organizations and formed the 13-team High School Girls Soccer League for players under 19. That league evolved into the Lake Highlands Girls Classic League, which still thrives today.

Kinder became coach of the Richardson-based U19 team. The girls voted to call themselves Sting, taking the name from that year’s hit movie starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman. In the movie, Sting is the moment the con artist finishes his play and takes his mark’s money.

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Taking show on the road

Kinder had no soccer background, but that made him no different than most youth coaches at the time.

Kinder, though, studied the sport and helped organize an adult playing league so coaches could better learn the nuances they were expected to teach.

Sting teams quickly earned a reputation for being sharp — both in soccer fundamentals and in appearance. Kinder instituted strict codes for conduct and dress.

“The demands were not just physical,” he says. “Everything they did had to be choreographed a certain way. We felt that to be successful, the image for the girls was the right image.”

Any Sting player whose shirt was untucked, socks not pulled up or warm-ups not properly zipped could expect immediate removal from the field. To keep socks from drooping during games, Sting began wearing tassels, which became a team trademark.

When Sting began traveling to games, initially out of town, then out of state and then internationally, players were required to dress identically, usually blue Haggar slacks and matching Polo shirts. Pragmatically, this also allowed Sting coaches and parents to keep track of the traveling party.

In 1976, Sting became the first girls or women’s soccer team to travel outside the United States. Sting faced Mexico’s national champion team in Mexico City, with 35,000 fans attending the game, which was played prior to a men’s professional match.

The Sting women’s soccer team poses for a group photo in 1975. (Courtesy Bill Kinder)

A year later, Sting became the first American girls soccer team to play in Europe, playing in Sweden’s Gothia Cup and falling to a team from Taiwan in the championship game. That showing earned Sting, in 1978, a chance to represent the United States in the first World Women’s Invitational Tournament in Taipei, Taiwan.

Despite playing against teams mostly composed of players in their 20s, Sting tied for third in Taipei. The next time the tournament was played, in 1981, Sting again traveled to Taipei and tied for ninth.

“We were celebrities, just like to World Cup today,” recalls Jody Weiss Venturoni, who played for Sting in 1981-82. “It was like nothing we’d ever seen. People were asking for our autographs. It was crazy.”

Venturoni says Sting players with blond hair needed extra security because many Taiwanese had never seen anyone with that color hair and would try to touch players’ heads.

Several nights during the 1981 tournament, galas were held where teams were asked to perform skits or show some form of talent for the dignitaries. The Sting performed the Cotton Eyed Joe.

It was important to Kinder that players experience local cultures and derive educational value from their travels.

Over the years Sting players, among other adventures, saw the ballet in Mexico City; the opera in Taipei; toured the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia and the Louvre in Paris; saw the Berlin Wall and changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace.

“Beating somebody in a soccer game, that’s your specific, immediate objective,” Kinder says. “But the goal is to create an environment where these kids could have educational experiences and become better people.

“One of the satisfying things is it became a component of a bigger picture in females becoming leaders and having more opportunities — opportunities that were not there in 1969.”

1984 Sting

The 1984 Sting team was the first American soccer team, male or female, to win a major international tournament. Click on a player’s name below to read more about them. (Courtesy Michelle Kimzey)

For several years, the Sting’s blazing of international trails for United States women’s soccer magnified a paradox back in America.

The first U.S. Soccer Youth U19 men’s championship was played in 1943, but it wasn’t until 1980 that the first U19 women’s championship was played, in San Jose, Calif. The Sting won, beating St. Louis 5-0 in the championship game.

After its local rival, the Dallas D’Feeters won the 1981 national title, Sting rebounded to win the ’82 title, with the semifinals and finals played at Hillcrest High School.

Upon finishing the 1981-82 season 47-0, Sting’s nine-year record was 400-9. It would go on to win five of the first nine U.S. U19 national titles.

Though Kinder retired from coaching and no longer is active with the Sting, the organization and its legacy endures.

Clearly, the United States would have eventually created a national women’s soccer team, but when a Sting team of mostly high school kids went to China and beat the best the world had to offer in October 1984, it certainly helped convince the U.S. Soccer Federation that it was a worthy investment.

The national team debuted 10 months later, at a tournament in Argentina.

“We’re extremely pleased that happened for the sake of soccer,” Kinder says. “There’s a lot of satisfaction in knowing there’s a connection to where women’s soccer has gone.”

Two weekends ago, Darla McMinn Agnew hosted a reunion of the 1980-82 Sting teams. The 1984-85 team plans a 30-year reunion this fall.

In 1999, Michelle Conaway Kimzey and her husband accompanied Kinder and his wife to the Rose Bowl. That day, they were among 90,000 fans who watched the United States beat China for the World Cup title.

But of course, it was extra-special seeing Kimzey’s Sting co-captain, Overbeck, continue a journey that some Richardson and North Dallas kids began in 1973.

“That’s probably when the emotion hit,” Kimzey says. “Watching your friend, your teammate. We were all like a family.

“We just felt like such a part of it and so proud of the whole legacy that Sting has left on all of us.”